Local government leaders want to build a new Powell Senior Center, renovate the Cody Auditorium and give a boost to the Town of Meeteetse, but the ultimate decision will rest with Park County voters.

Council members in Powell, Cody and Meeteetse and the county commissioners all agreed in recent weeks to ask voters for nearly $19.3 million; if a majority of local residents back the proposal in November’s general election, the money would be raised by temporarily raising the county’s sales tax rate from 4% to 5%. The tax would end once the $19,278,000 is collected.

City and county officials have talked about seeking a specific purpose tax for well over a year, but it only became reality on Tuesday, when commissioners unanimously voted to put the proposal on the Nov. 3 ballot.

“I do think that … each one of these projects is important to the citizens of the county,” said Commissioner Kelly Simone.

State law allows local governments to put forward a menu of projects for voters to choose between, but as they have in the past, Powell, Cody and Meeteetse leaders opted to bundle their projects as one joint package that will pass or fail together.

Powell City Administrator Zack Thorington said Tuesday that proposing a countywide tax for, say, just a Powell project probably wouldn’t draw support from Cody voters.

“So the history of a specific purpose [tax], I would say, has always been we join together with a project that’s really important to … your community,” Thorington said.

Powell Senior Center $7.9 million

It was the push for a new Powell Senior Center that kickstarted the tax discussion. 

The current center on North Gilbert Street is a mishmash of repurposed buildings and features three different levels. As a result, some seniors are unable to access roughly two-thirds of the building, said Wes Vining, the vice president of the center’s board.

“... In Powell, a lot of people moving in are not the young people looking for jobs, [they] are seniors,” Vining said, “and we’re serving a large constituency now in a very inadequate facility.”

Board president Steve Martin told the Powell City Council last month that “it’s been a long road” for the center’s leaders as they’ve pushed for a new senior center. They spent years chasing grants and other government funding, but none of those avenues panned out.

“We had, I don’t like saying this, but, politicians who were telling us what all they were going to be able to give us,” Martin said, “and … we did not qualify.”

At Tuesday’s commission meeting, Commissioner Scott Mangold said several people lobbied in Cheyenne for state funding, but those calls fell on “deaf ears.”

“It’s just one of the things that’s overlooked here in Wyoming, the senior members,” Mangold said, “even though we’re made up of seniors.”

One problem was that the current building is owned by the nonprofit that runs the center, Powell Senior Citizens A-Go Go, and not by a governmental entity.

Under the proposed tax, the new center would be built on a piece of land on South Fair Street that the group previously acquired and donated to the City of Powell. The city would also own the new building, leasing it to the nonprofit to run.

Vining noted Tuesday that the group has already put about $590,000 into the endeavor, including to design the new facility.

“This is going to serve the next three to four generations,” center director Linda Dalton told the commissioners, “so it is a very useful and responsible management of tax funds.”

Cody Auditorium $9.8 million

The Cody Auditorium was built in 1941 and is showing its age.

Cody Mayor Lee Ann Reiter said the city has been “nickel and diming and BandAid-ing this — and there’s a point where, at an 80-year-old building, we’re gonna run out of room to BandAid.”

For example, “we’re to the point now where we can no longer polish our wood floors because the nails are sticking out,” Reiter said.

Cody leaders are seeking $9.8 million to renovate the facility, which is used for community functions ranging from weddings to banquets.

The planned work includes removing asbestos from the ceiling and flooring and expanding the main bathrooms, which are undersized and not handicap-accessible. Other upgrades would improve the electrical infrastructure, audio-visual equipment, HVAC systems and fire suppression system.

Cody officials also intend to remodel the basement. The lower level is currently used for storage, but the city wants to convert it into meeting rooms and multi-purpose spaces.

“We want to make sure that we can continue to use it for the [next] 100 years, and [that] it’s even more useful to organizations and [for] other uses,” said Cody City Administrator Tony Tolstedt, mentioning the possibility of hosting conventions and small concerts.

Meeteetse projects $1.578 million

Meeteetse Clerk Angie Johnson said the town is grateful to have its nearly $1.6 million worth of projects included in the tax package, “because we’re so small and our tax base is very small.”

A top priority for the town is to replace the nearly 15-year-old garbage truck it uses to collect residents’ trash and haul it to the county landfill south of Cody. While Meeteetse generally relies on user fees to pay for its sanitation services, Johnson said the roughly 315-person town is so small that it can’t use rate hikes alone to cover a $340,000 truck.

“I mean, it’s [a] fixed income population,” she said, alluding to the town’s high percentage of seniors, “so I don’t know how much we can increase it to still provide the service that is needed for our community.”

Other projects included within Meeteetse’s share include: improving the commercial kitchen at the Meeteetse Senior Center by adding some equipment and a three-bay sink; purchasing a storage shed and computer for the Meeteetse Visitor Center; and renovating the town’s pool and HVAC system.

The pool was extensively renovated with the help of a specific purpose tax passed in 2006 and Johnson said it’s been great to see how many people have received swimming lessons at the facility over the past two decades.

What about a rec center?

Alongside the discussions about building a new senior center in Powell, there have been preliminary talks about eventually building a community rec center as well. At a June 1 Powell City Council meeting, council candidate Venus “Freedom” Bontadelli said she’d heard many people ask about creating a combined rec/senior center.

“There’s a lot of support for the seniors getting it,” Bontadelli said, “but I think there’d be a lot more support if they were also giving something back to the youth as well and bringing it all into one …”

She said those two segments of the Powell community “are both in desperate need of something.”

However, Powell Mayor John Wetzel said that kind of a change would force a restart of the design process, add costs and “throw a huge cog in it.”

“Some things that are worth it are not easy,” Bontadelli offered, but Wetzel said the discussions about a new senior center have been underway for years.

“So if they wanted to have that input, they should have probably brought it forth six years ago …,” Wetzel said.

He and others, including Martin, also questioned whether a combined facility would be feasible.

The Powell council unanimously voted to forward the tax proposal to the county commission, as did the Meeteetse and Cody councils; approval from at least two of the municipalities plus the commission was needed to put the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Park County voters last considered a specific use tax in November 2016, when about 53% of residents agreed to pay $13.68 million to widen Absaroka Street in Powell, upgrade sewer lagoons in Cody and Meeteetse and improve the South Fork Road and replace bridges in rural Park County.

It took two years to collect that tax and Park County Treasurer Barb Poley projects it would also take about two years to generate the $19.278 million proposed this time around.